Windows
(a prose poem)
by Charles Baudelaire
A
man looking out of an open window never sees as much as the same man looking directly
at a closed window. There is no object more deeply mysterious, no object more
pregnant with suggestion, more insidiously sinister, in short more truly dazzling
than a window lit up from within by even a single candle. What we can see out
in the sunlight is always less interesting than what we can perceive taking place
behind a pane of windowglass. In that pit, in that blackness or brightness, life
is being lived, life is suffering, life is dreaming....
Above
the wave-crests of the rooftops across the way I can see a middle-aged woman,
face already wrinkled--a poor woman forever bending over something, who never
seems to leave her room. From just her face and her dress, from practically nothing
at all, I've re-created this woman's story, or rather her legend; and sometimes
I weep while reciting it to myself.
Some
poor old man would have sufficed just as well; I could with equal ease have invented
a legend for him, too.
And
so I go to bed with a certain pride, having lived and suffered for others than
myself.
Of
course, you may confront me with: "But are you sure your story is really the true
and right one?" But what does it really matter what the reality outside myself
is, as long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am alive, to feel the
very nature of the creature that I am. | |
